Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd just like to make a short comment and to say that I will not be supporting this motion. Mr. Speaker, like I said in my statement earlier, when Members in this House go at it very strongly against a Minister or are pushing a Minister, I think people out there might think that some of us have something personally against a Minister. A lot of that has been said about me because I know that I've had my matches with Mr. Miltenberger and I've been often asked by media or anybody who listens to us if I'm going to ask for his head, and so on.
Mr. Miltenberger came and talked to me about this motion. Mr. Speaker, I oppose this motion for many reasons. One is that...I should just finish that thought. I am willing to go hard on the Minister to ask him to do his job. But asking for his resignation or censuring him is not an answer. I do believe, Mr. Speaker, seeing myself from Yellowknife, I do believe he has pushed really hard to meet the needs of small communities. There's no question that there's a lot that we have not been able to do.
I can understand that people in the communities are thinking that their services are not improving or maybe even deteriorating, but I do believe it is a responsibility of all of us. It's really a question that I think the next Assembly needs to look at seriously. It is the emergence of the disparity or difference of services and programs being provided to Yellowknife versus small communities.
Any Yellowknife Members here can tell you that we get calls from our people who are saying that it seems like Yellowknife, with the biggest population and as the capital city that it is, is not getting the attention from this government. So we seem to have sort of discontent on both sides. People cannot understand why Yellowknife, with the size that it is, only has two ice pads. Or with the taxes they're paying, why are their programs less than such?
I know that I've travelled across the Territories and I can totally appreciate how the people in the communities feel that they are not getting the basic services they need or they should get a lot more than what they have. Certainly it's a task for all of us.
I don't think censuring a Minister on the last day and putting everything on his shoulders is really being responsible, frankly. I do respect the Members here to make a statement and the Members especially from small communities to show their frustration at the lack of action. But I don't believe the motion is the way to go.
I agree totally with what the Minister said about individual responsibility. There's a lot of room there for us to improve on. But there's no question, as a government and as an Assembly, we have not moved as far as we can on the social agenda. I know the Minister has been working very hard on a health care plan. We have had so many studies in the last three years, once again, I think we might have studied more on issues than acted upon.
I do believe and I know that it's the eve of the election, but I am not afraid of taking my share of the responsibility for the stuff that we have not been able to achieve for the people. We have had lots of agendas, but there's no question in my mind that if there ever was a Minister that really worked hard to take things away from Yellowknife and put it into communities, that is Mr. Miltenberger.
---Laughter
I'll give you that. Much of my fight had to do with stopping him because that would be my job to do it.
So I hope I'm making myself clear. I think it's a question about small communities versus big communities. It's a challenge for many governments to come to address. It's about how much of the total budget we had that we spent on health and social services and our social problems that we have.
The increasing money that's flowing in Yellowknife is considered to be one of the causes for lots of social problems that we are having in the city, and the residents are getting more engaged in that debate. So I believe that this is an issue much bigger than the Minister himself...
---Laughter
...so, for that reason...
---Laughter
...bigger than the Minister's power. So I'm not going to support this motion, but I do respect the arguments being put forward by the Members for North Slave and Mackenzie Delta. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.